Rare teas more than 50 years old up for auction; rare oolong expected to sell for $137,000

From Hong Kong:

The city's first tea auction expects to pull in up to HK$10 million [$1,289,970 USD]  as mainlanders drive up the prices, with one box of tea leaves expected to fetch HK$1 million [$129,001 USD].
Fortune Auctioneers will auction more than 190 lots of tea, teapots and utensils from private collections from Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing and Guangdong.
Tea expert and auction planner Vincent Chu Ying-wah said the "Sensation of Tea" auction would be the first in the city to sell exclusively tea and tea-related items.
"We have had a tea-drinking tradition for a really long time, just like the French drink wine," he said. "Chinese people have got wealthy and tea is a necessary thing [for us]. This is why the price of tea still keeps going up."
He said he hoped it would be the first of many such auctions.
The prize lot is a 20kg box of narcissus oolong tea bearing the Wu-Yi brand which has been valued at nearly HK$1 million. The tea was exported to Singapore in the 1960s and passed through many hands before being brought back to Hong Kong by a local collector who bought it from a Malaysian-Chinese tea connoisseur from Penang.
Also going under the hammer is a 350 gram cake of pu'er tea manufactured at the highly reputed Menghai Tea Factory in Yunnan province and valued at HK$500,000.
The auction will be held at The Park Lane hotel on November 23 and will be open to the public. A preview will run from November 19 to 22.

Source: South China Morning Post